PEW Internet and American Life Project have a great paper out right now with some interesting stats on use of the internet and email and how it effects workers. It is from September 24, 2008 and the data seems to have been collected earlier in the year.
It caught my attention in relation to the Work Literacy Web 2.0 for Learning Professionals workshop/class/network (it’s a bit of all of these). Someone was wondering if the tasks people are doing in relation to age have shifted over the last year or so. It seems that the older boomers maybe even seniors (in terms of generations) are more 2.0 savvy than ever. I’m not sure to be honest, but this report has some interesting information on how email (personal and work related) and the internet effect workers at home and in the “office”. I know the eLearning Guild is also doing a free webinar today on their eLearning 2.0 360 findings as well and may address some of this – who is doing what and where idea.
Some of the PEW/Internet findings:
Working men and women are equally as likely to blog, but young adults far outpace older workers in their engagement with blogging. Employed internet users ages 18-29 are more than twice as likely to blog when compared with 30-49 year olds (20% vs. 9%). However, young adults are no more likely to report at-work tending to their blog; just 2% say they blog from work.
Blog reading is also most prevalent among younger generations of employed internet
users. One in three internet-using employees (33%) say they have read someone else’s blog or online journal, and 11% report at least some at-work reading. However, among young working adults, 46% are blog readers, compared with 33% of 30-49 year olds and 25% of employed internet users ages 50-64. At-work blog reading is equally prevalent among all of these groups.